3.5 Razors

Hidden Gem – Confidence

/ / Home Video
  • Title: Confidence
  • IMDb: link

“Tommy Suits always said ‘a confidence game is like putting on a play where everyone knows their part: the inside man, the roper, the shills, everyone that is, except for the mark.'”

Every once in awhile you run across a film in the DVD aisle and say to yourself, “What is that?”  That’s how I came across Confidence.  Released in theaters in 2003 the film takes a look at a group of con artists whose latest con has gone south and their last ditch attempt to rectify the situation, get out from behind the thumb of a crime boss, and perform the biggest con of their lives. 

Jake Vig (Edward Burns) and his team of con men have just pulled off another successful con.  Everything should be gravy, but then the other shoe drops.  It turns out the money they’ve taken belongs to an unforgiving crime boss (Dustin Hoffman), and then, when one of the team ends up dead (Louis Lombardi), they realize they have stepped into a whole new league.

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Resurrecting the Champ

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Resurrecting the Champ
  • IMDb: link

Resurrecting the Champ

I remember watching the trailer for this film and wondering why it wasn’t made for the ABC Family channel.  Truth is I’m not much of a Josh Hartnett fan, other than his small roles in films like The Virgin Suicides and Sin City.  This film, as cheesy as it is at times, comes off with some heart, and Hartnett deserves most of the credit.

Erik Kernan (Hartnett) is a sports writer, who, as his boss (Alan Alda) describes, has a talent for typing with very little writing.  Looking for a shot on the newspaper’s magazine, and a cushier gig, Erik proposes the story of a former boxing champion Bob Satterfield (Samuel L. Jackson) now living on the streets.

Although much of screen time of the film is taken up with Satterfield and his story and Kernan’s attempts to tell it to the world, that’s not what the film is really about.  More than anything else this is a film about fathers and sons.  Kernan deals with being separated from his wife (Kathryn Morris) and six-year-old son (Dakota Goyo), and at the same time tries to come to terms with the legacy of his father, a legendary radio announcer.

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Jane Austen, The Early Years

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Becoming Jane
  • IMDb: link

Becoming Jane

Jane (Anne Hathaway) is a beautiful country girl who enjoys sharing her works with her neighbors.  Into her life arrives young Tom Lefroy (James McAvoy) an Irish scoundrel from the city sent out into the wilderness by his uncle (Ian Richardson) for his inappropriate behavior.  Tom scoffs Anne’s writings and her surroundings, infuriating the young woman.

Fans of Hollywood romances can guess what happens next.  A friendship between the pair begins as Tom introduces Jane to new ideas and Jane shows Tom that the city doesn’t hold all of the world’s wonders.

Although the story is rather straight-forward it is well-handled and enjoyable.  Hathaway proves more than up to the task in making the role her own and carrying the film, though I do wonder at why an English actor (like say Kiera Knightly) wasn’t chosen for the role.  McAvoy provides some good humor to the role and there is nice, if constrained, chemistry between the pair.  Add to all this a supporting cast which includes Maggie Smith, James Cromwell, and Julie Waters and you’ve got a good film.

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Bourne Again

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: The Bourne Ultimatum
  • IMDb: link

“I remember…I remember everything.”

bourne-ultimatum-poster

When I heard the words above in the trailer chills went up my spine.  I enjoyed The Bourne Identity (read December’s review) but I was blown away by the second installment The Bourne Supremacy.  So here was the sequel I was waiting for all summer.  The result was a good, though slightly disappointing, film that is still better than most of the sequels this year.

We begin, seconds after Jason Bourne’s (Matt Damon) survival in the tunnel, with his escape from Russian police.  The final scene from The Bourne Supremacy, the phone conversation between Bourne and Pamela Landy (Joan Allen) is later expertly woven into the main plot of this film.  From there we move to the shadowy government forces still attempting to track Bourne down and hide the dirty secrets which are locked in his brain.  Both Allen and Julia Stiles return, and although Stiles is given a larger (and somewhat continuity-questionable) role, Allen is demoted into the lone good guy in a room full of snakes who will do whatever it takes to keep their dirty little secrets hidden.

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You Kill Me

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: You Kill Me
  • IMDb: link

“My drinking is interfering with my work.  That’s why I’m here, so I can get sober and go back to killing people full time.”
 

you-kill-me-poster

After botching an important assignment Frank Falenczyk (Ben Kingsley) is shipped out of Buffalo to sunny San Francisco to get control of his drinking problem which is interfering with his work – killing people for the Polish mob.

After arriving in San Fransisco Frank is put up in an apartment and given a job in a funeral home by a friend of his bosses back home (Bill Pullman).  He begins to attend AA meetings, finds a friend and a sponsor (Luke Wilson) and meets and falls for a lonely woman (Tea Leoni).  For the first time Frank takes an honest look at his life and realizes he needs to get better so he can return to Buffalo and get back to the work he is so good at – killing people.

Much like The Matador (read that review) the film balances the issues of killing and death with a certain amount of whimsy and some fairly dark humor.  The AA scenes are some of the best in the film, especially when Frank decides to come clean with everyone about what it is he does.

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